The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
Customized goods are highly appealing to consumers who wish to obtain unique and personalized products. Many such consumers browse and order customized goods remotely, for example through a web site that displays product images depicting the products for sale.
Using such a website, a customer may specify a how a product is to be customized, for example, by uploading or specifying patterns, images, or text and customizing the arrangement of such patterns, images, or text. Both customers and on-line retailers would benefit if a customization image could be generated in real-time, which depicts a product as customized according to the customer's specified customization, and be displayed to the customer in response to receiving the customer's customization.
One approach for generating such a customization image would be to simply overlay an image of the customer-specified customization on an image of a non-customized product. However, such an image would not be an accurate depiction of a three-dimensional product because the customization image would not depict the natural contours of such a product. The customer-uploaded image, design, or text would be a flat image, lacking the shading of a contoured image, or at least lacking shading that matches the contours of the non-customized product image.
What is needed is an approach for the automatic rendering of a product customization image, which depicts a customized product as it would actually appear. Customer service in websites of this type is also improved when customers can view a sequence of images of a customized product as a three-dimensional rendering that is capable of rotation and viewing from different angles. To support 3D viewing of products to be custom manufactured, typically a sample product is photographed approximately simultaneously from different angles and the resulting images are combined into a 3D model. Existing systems cannot capture, with enough speed, efficiency and/or accuracy, a set of images for use in rendering a 3D model while concurrently obtaining sufficient information to accurately represent a customized pattern, image or text in the 3D model in order to provide a customer with a view of how the custom-manufactured product will ultimately appear.